AI

AI amputates information from its source, so internet users must continue to look for citations and click through to original sources.

Commentary on Statement on Educational Technologies and AI Agents by Stephen Downes. Online learning, e-learning, new media, connectivism, MOOCs, personal learning environments, new literacy, and more

New research finds that AI companions can provide emotional support, intimacy, and personal growth, but they can also erode human relationships.

AI is warping our understanding of what public education is for

Time for some “life lessons.”…

Libraries worldwide are exploring or ramping up their use of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by Clarivate, a global information services company.

This is Sarah Jeong, features editor at The Verge. I’m standing in for Nilay for one final Thursday episode here as he settles back into full-time hosting duties. Today, we’ve got a fun one. I’m talking to Cory Doctorow, prolific author, internet activist, and arguably one of the fiercest tech critics writing today. He has a new book out called Enshittifcation: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. So I sat down with Cory to discuss what enshittification is, why it’s happening, and how we might fight it. Links: Enshittification | Macmillan Why every website you used to love is getting worse | Vox The age of Enshittification | The New Yorker Yes, everything online sucks now — but it doesn’t have to | Ars Technica The enshittification of garage-door openers reveals vast, deadly rot | Cory Doctorow Mark Zuckerberg emails outline plan to neutralize competitors | The Verge Google gets to keep Chrome, judge rules in antitrust case | The Verge How Amazon wins: by steamrolling rivals and…

Are we using Gen Z as our AI guinea pigs? 🐷In this first episode of our five-part Life With Machines x @YoungFutures series, Baratunde Thurston explores how...

Meaningful relationships are about giving, not only receiving.

Colleges are experimenting with making online teaching videos featuring AI avatar versions of professors. Some students find the simulated likenesses of their instructors a bit creepy, but proponents say the technology could be key to making college courses more active and human. The idea is that AI will make it easy to make personalized teaching videos so that more teachers can adopt a “flipped classroom” approach — where students watch video lecturers as homework so class time is spent on discussion or projects.

ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are serving users propaganda from Russian-backed media when asked about the invasion of Ukraine, new research finds.

ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are serving users propaganda from Russian-backed media when asked about the invasion of Ukraine, new research finds.

I've been thinking about Alpha School and yet another article - this time it's "Parents Fell in Love with Alpha School's Promise. Then They Wanted Out" by Todd Feathers published today in Wired at https://lnkd.in/gNCAx47s - detailing the school leaders' saviorism and their vision of education as a dystopian surveillance hellscape. What other visions of education should we pursue with teachers, students, and caregivers? A few years ago, I read, "Impossible Dreaming: On Speculative Education Fiction and Hopeful Learning Futures" by Shandell Houlden and George Veletsianos. They challenge speculative education researchers to shift focus away from apocalyptic futures and instead engage students in hope because "Imagining these hopeful education futures is necessary, to avoid reinforcing structures of injustice and inequality such as settler colonialism and to invite more radical imagination into our work as a means to seed the worlds we want to create and live in." You can read their excellent article at: https://lnkd.in/gKUGVjzc I took inspiration from Houlden and Veletsianos for one of my dissertation studies. I challenged a group of high school students to design a speculative educational technology for collective thriving at their school. We discussed how Mariame Kaba, Ruha Benjamin, Seamus Heaney, and others conceive of hope. We watched sava saheli singhs' short film on speculative ed-tech #tresdancing. (Watch and teach the film at: https://lnkd.in/gNiCNXHJ). We prototyped, provided feedback, and revised. What emerged were projects that align with previous research findings that students often reproduce existing hierarchies in their speculative technologies - and powerful possibilities for civic action in the here and now grounded in community and justice. Anyway, I reject Alpha School and its profiteering, dehumanizing education. Instead, I'll be working with teachers, students, and caregivers to imagine - and enact - otherwises "as a means to seed the worlds we want to create and live in."

We spot a new Google Lens "questions about this content" feature in the wild and muck around a bit with it, unsure how much it really improves things.

On this week’s episode, kids discuss ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it taking our jobs?? WILL IT REPLACE OUR CHILDREN?! These kids give u...

The euphoria is drawing comparisons to the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s and the 2008 financial crisis.

Del Toro's new Frankenstein adaption reimagines Mary Shelley's 1818 Gothic novel. Frankenstein was like a tech bro: "creating something without considering the consequences," he explains.

Taki Allen was sitting outside Kenwood High School with friends, eating a bag of chips after football practice on Monday. Around 20 minutes later, cops showed up with guns, walking toward Allen. "They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back and cuff me. Then, they searched me and they figured out I had nothing," said Taki Allen. "Then, they went over to where I was standing and found a bag of chips on the floor."

Researchers identified tendencies for the chatbot to respond to prompts from fictitious teens by promoting harmful behaviors, as long as users told it the information was for a friend or project.

I see some instructors on here joking how they are going to add prompt injections into assignments as a defense against agentive browsers. I get the frustration and maybe it's just jokes? Maybe I need to lighten up? But just in case: prompt injection applied to people to whom you have a duty of care is not funny, it's not resistance, it's deeply messed up behavior that involves using your power to hijack the computer of people you force to consume your compromised materials, and if that seems reasonable to you, you need to touch some grass.

A.I. is just what we need in the post-fact era: less research and more predicting what we want to hear.

We're walking on a knife edge

My husband said to me last night, "I don't understand your relationship to #AI." 😂 What can I say, I'm a Libra. I thrive in the paradox. #AI is not an either/or for me. My husband (and all of you tbh) is as likely to hear me discussing the possible benefit of building a #CustomGPT for #online, #asynch #faculty as he is hearing me rant that #AI is an existential threat to humanity. I am not pro-AI or anti-AI. I'm both and neither. P.S. If this post bothers you, you're probably a Virgo! ♍️ | 10 comments on LinkedIn

Stephen Colbert looks at the ways artificial intelligence companies are seeking to boost revenue as investors begin to worry that the A.I. stock bubble could...

Editor’s Note: Please join us in welcoming Eleanor Ball, Information Literacy & Liaison Librarian and Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Northern Iowa, as a new First Year Academic Librarian Experience blogger for the 2025-26 year here at ACRLog. I’m about as anti-AI as they come. I’ve never used it, and I’m ethically